The Intern Diary: EDF Climate Corps Fellow Wraps Up at NewsCorp With Big Results

I looked straight ahead at the roughly 80” wideprojected television screen in the News Corporation’s New York Polycom Telepresence Suite. As News Corp’sGlobal Energy Initiative was traveling to Australia that week, Iwould be delivering my final presentation via video-conference in what musthave been the most technologically advanced way possible. With SouthBrunswick, NJ on the left and Sydney, Australia on the right, it was hard tobelieve I was in my last week as an EDF Climate Corpsfellow.

What an amazing ten-week adventure it was! Whatseemed like a daunting amount of work in Week 1, turned out to be an enlightening, deep diveinto the world of corporate energy strategy.

In the end, the projects I identified would serveto reduce the annual energy costs of News Corp’s printing plant in the Bronx,decrease the company’s carbon footprint and help underscore the company as aleader in its commitment to corporate sustainability

Over the course of my fellowship, I worked with thelighting and HVAC foremen at the Dow Jones Printing Plant to gauge thebuilding’s existing energy infrastructure:

1) Iidentified a $240,000 lighting retrofit that would pay itself back in 2.5 yearsand prevent approximately 620 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering theatmosphere.
2) Throughsmall tweaks to the plant’s thermostat HVAC systems,I identified methods that would result in over $30,000 in annual energy savingsand require zero upfront capital investment.

These aforementioned measures, along with smaller projects thatrevamped the company’s printing infrastructure and fleet efficiency, would costa total of $229,700 and result in annual energy savings of$179,500. Putting this into environmental context, theseinitiatives could save the company 900,000 kilowatt hours peryear in energy consumption and decrease its carbon footprint by 942 metric tons.

While I have always been passionate about environmentalsustainability, my summer fellowship with EDF’s Climate Corps Program showed mehow easy it could be for a company to “go green,” especially when tangiblefinancial gains can be realized! I feel privileged to have worked with acompany that stands truly dedicated to its environmental responsibility and hassuch a tremendous opportunity to influence the behaviors of its employees,business partners and, perhaps its largest constituent, its audiences.

I am now dedicated to pursuing a career in sustainable technologyand using it to help businesses and organizations decrease energy expenses andheadline themselves as leading corporate citizens in energy efficiency andcarbon reduction.

--ByJay Stone, MBA, SternSchool of Business, New York University, 2010 EDFClimate Corps Fellow at News Corp. – Dow Jones, Member of Net Impact

This is the final post by Stone in aseries of blogs that In Good Company hosted this summer in collaboration with EDF, featuring fellows fromtheir 2010 Climate Corps class, as they journey through their internships. Withtheir posts, these interns gave us a rare lens into the behind-the-scenesoperations at companies who are proactively discussing corporatesustainability, one conversation at a time.

Previous posts by Jay:

EDF Climate Corps Fellow Begins Search for EnergySavings at News Corp

Thermostat Wars and Energy Efficiency